276°
Posted 20 hours ago

Soldier Blue [Blu-ray]

£10.31£20.62Clearance
ZTS2023's avatar
Shared by
ZTS2023
Joined in 2023
82
63

About this deal

I recently taped and watched the BBC2 screening of "Soldier Blue" - a graphic and uncompromising Western movie from 1971, starring Peter Strauss and Candace Bergen. So, does anyone know if a completely uncut DVD release is in existance, or will this be one of those films that will never be seen in full, due to its history (ala "The Last House On The Left"), and bad storage of one copy of the original uncensored negative? Multiple film critics said Soldier Blue evoked the My Lai massacre, which had been disclosed to the American public the previous year. [10] In September 1970, Dotson Rader writing in The New York Times, remarked that Soldier Blue "must be numbered among the most significant, the most brutal and liberating, the most honest American films ever made." [6] But that just won't do. The film is too mixed up to qualify as a serious allegory about anything. And although it is pro-Indian, it is also white chauvinist. Like "A Man Called Horse," another so-called pro-Indian film, it doesn't have the courage to be about real Indians. The hero in these films somehow has a way of turning out to be white.

Retrospective analysis has placed the film in a tradition of motion pictures of the early 1970s– such as Ulzana's Raid (1972)– which were used as "natural venues for remarking on the killing of women and children by American soldiers" in light of the political conflicts of the era. [17] However, the "visual excesses" of the film's most violent sequences have been similarly criticized as exploitative by modern critics as well. [18] The central section of the film, when Honus and Cresta are wandering through the wilderness enduring trials and falling in love, is thoughtful, eventful, gentle and exciting. But the raison d'etre of this movie - stated, if obliquely, in Buffy St Marie's opening theme song - is the massacre at the end, which is genuinely horrific (if rather dated in terms of special effects). Well, I'd actually quite like to get it on DVD, although I'm having problems locating a fully uncensored version. The German DVD release looks to run only 110 minutes, and is cut. Without exception, the characters are one-dimensional. We have a strong woman, who has seen horrors done in the name of America. Her travelling companion is a simple soldier, who thinks his country is great. Her fiance (Dana Elcar) is a captain in the army. An old colonel (John Anderson) plans a raid on a Cheyenne village and a Cheyenne warrior (Jorge Rivero) believes he can make peace with the Americans, but will be betrayed. The least said about Donald Pleasence and his comedy teeth the better. He plays a calico salesman by the name of Isaac Q. Cumber (cucumber, geddit?). In 1877 Colorado Territory, a young woman, Cresta Lee, and young Colorado Private Honus Gant are joined together by fate when they are the only two survivors after their group is massacred by the Cheyenne. Gant is devoted to his country and duty; Lee, who has lived with the Cheyenne for two years, is scornful of Gant (she refers to him as "Soldier Blue" derisively) and declares that in this conflict she sympathizes with them. The two must now try to make it to Fort Reunion, the army camp, where Cresta's fiancé, an army officer, waits for her. As they travel through the desert with very low supplies, hiding from the Indians, they are spotted by a group of Kiowa horsemen. Under pressure from Cresta, Honus fights and seriously wounds the group's chief when the chief challenges him. Honus finds himself unable to kill the disgraced Kiowa leader, whose own men stab him leaving Honus and Cresta alone. The ideological gulf between them is also revealed in their attitudes towards societal mores, with the almost-puritanical Honus disturbed by things Cresta barely notices.A couple hiking in the great outdoors being kidnapped by a sadistic thug and having to run for their lives a b Ebert, Roger (January 1, 1970). "Soldier Blue". Chicago Sun-Times . Retrieved March 28, 2018– via RogerEbert.com. Perhaps some of the musical score, or the paralels with the Vietnam war are now dated, but generally it remains a powerful film that also makes you think. Soldier Blue" often gets touted as a "revisionist western", but its actually got more in common with exploitation cinema, of which it's one of the genre's best.

Almost every two minutes Cresta scornfully calls Honus "Soldier Blue." It doesn't take a genius to work out that she'll be talking in a different tone quite soon, such as, "Oh Soldier Blue, you're so dreamy", or "Well, what do you think of your country now, Soldier Blue?"In a 2005 article on the film in Uncut, Kevin Maher deemed it "a bloody 1970 exploitation western ... [which] has a gore-count worthy of Cannibal Holocaust." [5] TV Guide awarded the film one out of five stars, writing: " Soldier Blue suffers from Bergen's weak performance and Strauss is bland, but the parallel between the 1864 Sand Creek Massacre and Vietnam's My Lai incident is disturbing and the film's depiction of Native American life is an explicit attempt to move past Hollywood stereotypes." [19] I love Native American culture, but the whitewashing of Native atrocities and this revisionist history stuff is dishonest and unbalanced. "Soldier Blue" is guilty of this but, as a movie, it's entertaining and its message is necessary in light of all the movies that depict Indians as sub-human savages to be gunned down on the spot.

As a Western, the characters are far too anachronistic. It would be little surprise to hear Cresta say to Honus, "Get with the programme, Soldier Blue. The Man has been lying to you." As an allegory, it's simplistic, patronising and wasteful. The other is the military aspects, which seem to be a reflection on the U.S. military of the time, 1970—which means Vietnam. The senselessness of the killing and the blind military attitudes seem, at least on the surface, to parallel popular attitudes against American involvement in the Vietnam War. It was common at the time (as now) to use movies to speak to contemporary themes this way. Near the end, the flag is thrown to the ground in disgust and there is a long, truly brutal, and frankly disturbing battle scene. Huebner, Andrew J. (2008). The Warrior Image: Soldiers in American Culture from the Second World War to the Vietnam Era. University of North Carolina Press. ISBN 978-0-807-83144-1. Cashing in on this trend was "Soldier Blue", notorious for its "massacre sequence" in which boys are shot, children are trampled by horses, squaws are beheaded, men are impaled, women are stripped, breasts are cut, civilians are mutilated and all manners of sadistic evil and re-enacted, all in the name of "keeping the country clean". It's nauseating. However this was portrayed in Soldier Blue, I haven't seen it so cannot vouch for it's authenticity or how well or not it is staged, I would imagine what happened for real that day was a lot worse.

VERY 1980's

That should give you a rough idea, at least. However, up until that time, the film is - like you say - pretty tame. If only you had seen the final 20 minutes, then you'd know why it was so controversial! BBC2's print was in an approximate 1.85:1 widescreen ratio, and ran for about 112 minutes (TV speed, though). However, the BBC could not tell me if any material had been censored or cut by them, or by the distributor of the movie. Curious to know what the movie's about? Here's the plot: "After a cavalry group is massacred by the Cheyenne, only two survivors remain: Honus, a naive private devoted to his duty, and Cresta, a young woman who had lived with the Cheyenne two years and whose sympathies lie more with them than with the US government. Together, they must try to reach the cavalry's main base camp. As they travel onward, Honus is torn between his growing affection for Cresta." Soldier Blue premiered in New York City on August 12, 1970, and opened in Los Angeles two days later on August 14, 1970. [1] Box office [ edit ]

Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times wrote of the film: " Soldier Blue is indeed savage, but it wears its cloak of "truth" self-consciously. It is supposed to be a pro-Indian movie, and at the end the camera tells us the story was true, more or less, and that the Army chief of staff himself called the massacre shown in the film one of the most shameful moments in American history." [11] He added: "So it was, and of course we're supposed to make the connection with My Lai and take Soldier Blue as an allegory for Vietnam. But that just won't do. The film is too mixed up to qualify as a serious allegory about anything." [11] The Time Out film guide called the film "a grimly embarrassing anti-racist Western about the U.S. Cavalry's notorious Sand Creek Indian massacre in 1864. In the interests of propaganda, one might just about stomach the way the massacre itself is turned into a gleefully exploitative gore-fest of blood and amputated limbs; but not when it's associated with a desert romance that's shot like an ad-man's wet dream, all soft focus and sweet nothings." [12] Contemporary [ edit ]Modern critics and scholars have alternately described Soldier Blue as a revisionist western [13] anti-American, [14] and as an exploitation film. [5] In 2004, the BBC named it "one of the most significant American films ever made." [15] British author and critic P.B. Hurst, who wrote the 2008 book The Most Savage Film: Soldier Blue, Cinematic Violence and the Horrors of War, said of the film: [16]

Asda Great Deal

Free UK shipping. 15 day free returns.
Community Updates
*So you can easily identify outgoing links on our site, we've marked them with an "*" symbol. Links on our site are monetised, but this never affects which deals get posted. Find more info in our FAQs and About Us page.
New Comment